The researcher with Save Passamaquoddy Bay 3-Nation Alliance said in an interview the Quoddy Bay LNG project, to build a liquefied natural gas terminal on Passamaquoddy tribal land in Maine across from Deer Island, is dead.

Quoddy Bay LNG intends to appeal the decision on April 23 by the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs to cancel the company's lease to the Split Rock site on Pleasant Point Reservation, president Donald M. Smith said in Oklahoma City last week.

The appeal will go nowhere, Godfrey predicted from Eastport, Maine.

"Smith is merely embarrassed that he has had an enormous failure, and he's just trying to spin it to make it sound otherwise, but this project is already double dead if not triple dead," he said.

"It's been killed by two federal agencies plus the tribe. His claim that the lease still exists, obviously it doesn't."

The Passamaquoddy group Nulankeyutmonen Nkihtaqmikon sued the Bureau of Indian Affairs after the federal agency approved the lease to the Split Rock site June 1, 2005.

On June 9 last year the Passamaquoddy tribal council cancelled the lease for non-payment. On April 23 this year the bureau supported the council's decision.

On Oct. 17, 2008, the United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission suspended its review of Quoddy Bay LNG's proposal. Shortly afterwards the company withdrew its application from the Maine Board of Environmental Review.

Applications by two other liquefied natural gas proposals continue through the American regulatory processes. Downeast LNG would build a terminal at Robinston, across the mouth of the St. Croix River. Calais LNG would build across from the port of Bayside.

Supporters say the projects would bring needed work to the region region, but opponents counter that they would destroy more economic opportunity than they'd create.